The very first teaser for Apex Legends Season 4 may have just crashed landed in World’s Edge, after players noticed what appeared to be a burning meteor fly through the center of Capitol City before impacting on the side of a building.
With Apex’s third season winding down, and the excitement of Crypto’s release and the move to World’s Edge well and truly worn off, players are keeping their eyes peeled for the next teaser that could kick-start the game’s new event.
After a few false starts surrounding a glitched notification and an image of World’s Edge’s skyhook potentially in peril was shot down by Respawn devs, it seems like something more tangible — and hot — may have just crash-landed.
Is the mysterious projectile a meteor?
The short in-game clip, captured by Reddit user ‘TTeeckCorba’ and shared on January 9, appears to show a burning meteor come flying out of the right side of the screen, before exploding into one of the buildings in Capitol City.
The real question is: was it really a meteor? There’s every chance it could be another one of the multitudes of bugs plaguing the battle royale at the moment, which has seen everything from disappearing maps to invincible characters.
The meteor’s tail does look similar to the missiles fired by Bangalore and Gibraltar’s ultimates, leading some to suggest it could be rogue projectiles from those abilities that have made their way to where TTeeckCorba was looting.
This theory is helped by the fact a Gibraltar ult appears to be rumbling in the distance, but considering how quickly the explosive projectile flies into frame and detonates, others aren’t so sure it could have traveled that far between the time the noise appeared, and the detonation.
According to another Apex player in the Reddit thread, however, this isn’t a one-off event — they’ve seen the apparent meteor strike twice before, also in Capitol City, but they haven’t recorded the incident because they didn’t quite believe it.
“Glad you captured it,” ‘CSEnzley’ said, and admitted other meteors have landed. “I’ve seen it twice in this area but always convinced myself it was something else just acting in a strange way. This settles it though, it’s something different for sure.”
Other players agreed it couldn’t have been an ult ability gone rogue. One keen Apex fan, ‘Ghost-Of-Nappa,’ even listened to the sounds a few times, and concluded it was “definitely not a Gibraltar ult” because of the lack of “horn indicating the start,” and “no further explosive sounds indicating a lingering ult.”
They also added it couldn’t have been a Gibraltar missile hitting an Octane launch pad because of the “perfectly straight trajectory,” and added “items bounced off the pad are affected by gravity and will arc [but] the tail of the meteor is perfectly straight. I’m fairly certain this is a new event.”
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Could Season 4’s teaser be right around the corner?
If the footage from TTeeckCorba, and the added information from CSEnzley, is legitimate, the meteor could well be a precursor for something more.
Towards the end of Season 2, mysterious hacker Crypto began appearing across King’s Canyon, digitally altering player banners, breaking computers, and generally just running riot across the game’s original map.
In the end, it turned out he was trying to take the Apex Games to another world, an objective he succeeded with at the turn of the season. Season 2 swung into Season 3, and players landed in World’s Edge for the ‘Meltdown’ era.
Funnily enough, this isn’t the first time a potential meteor strike has been teased in a modern battle royale either, with genre-titan Fortnite wiping popular drop-spot Dusty Depot off the map in an event at the end of their own third season in 2018.
Players will also be wondering how the crash could tie into the game’s leaked new character Revenant, the creepy mastermind behind the Shadowfall LTM. While the simulacrum brought zombies into Apex, meteors don’t seem quite up his alley.
What is coming in Apex Legends Season 4?
Whether or not the meteor is tied to Revenant, or any of the other characters that have been data-mined and leaked, and whether the meteor is real, players can expect the Season 4 teasers to start soon, with Season 3 nearly over.
According to Respawn, Season 4 is set to begin on Tuesday, February 4, exactly a year after the shock release of the character-based battle royale. The game’s much-maligned third season is expected to end around the same time.
As well as the new legend joining the Apex Games, players can expect a number of new weapons, including the recently data-mined Volt SMG, and the CAR SMG, both of which first started life in Respawn’s Titanfall series.
For now, however, players will have to wait with bated breath to see if Respawn weighs in on the meteor. They were quick to damn the glitched banner on Wednesday, so they may condemn this one to the “bug” realm too.
If they don’t say anything though, their potential silence could be deafening — if it really is the beginning of Season 4’s in-game changeover event, they may not want to ruin the surprise until more players have seen the meteor fly by in the sky.